Cafe Stories

Cafe Dreaming

Could I have asked for anything better than this? Maybe a winning Powerball ticket, but I’m not even sure about that. Sitting in a cafe with a beautiful blue-eyed man — total eye candy in my opinion — and he’s got a brain, and I love the sound of his voice, love to listen to him talk, think everything he says is brilliant and fascinating; he’s sweet and caring, listens to me, buys me ginger tea or coffee, gives the best hugs; he said, “Meet me at the cafe on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We’ll work on becoming self-employed.”

I’m thinking, “This is a miracle, something I’ve prayed for. I never imagined help would show up in such a lovely package. The Goddess is kind.”

So, here we are at the cafe, dreaming, playing, creating…

This is all true in a very literal way. I prayed to the Goddess. I asked for her help, and help showed up in the form of a man I fondly nick-named “Blue Eyes.”

I’m not sure about my impact on him. He’s never shared those kinds of thoughts with me, but he did ask me to “sharpen my sword with him” and hold him accountable. I told him he was invoking Athena. He also asked me to guide him in a stream-of-consciousness free-writing exercise in which he communicated with an element of a dream he’d had the night before.

Now that’s my kind of man!

The Goddess is kind.

Dear Goddess,

Please send me a winning lottery ticket, a book contract with a major New York publisher, and bring harmony to all my relationships.

Thank you!

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Blue-Eyed Tears

Fluid. That’s the name of the cafe. You’re driving down 20th Avenue and see his Blue truck; you pull up to the curb and park. Inside, he’s at the counter. You converse about where you’ll sit.

In the back room. There’s a big table to the side where you can both spread out your day’s work. As usual, your own stuff covers an entire half of the table, plus stuff underneath: your purse, your llama-wool hat and gloves, even on the floor at your feet, a bag of books.

All he has in front of him is a hard-cover book and a black spiral-bound notebook. He is so studious when he reads, stopping occasionally to make tiny marks in his notebook, so tiny you’d have to use a magnifying glass to figure out what he’s written, even then you’re not sure you’d understand his cryptic code, some tiny notes in black, some in red. It all means something to him and you’d love to get a hold of that notebook, read it from beginning to end and see if you could decipher his soul.

He says, “This is so profound. Listen.” Then he reads a passage from the book. You look at his face and see a tear streaming down one cheek. You look to his other eye. There too is a tear trickling down, then more tears.

“Grief is the gift that lets you know the wound really mattered,” he repeats.

“Why does that make you sad?”

His tears flow freely from his beautiful blue eyes and he wipes his face. “These aren’t tears of sadness. The words are just so profound. “

You reach your hand across the table and run a finger gently, almost imperceptibly, along his pinky as he holds the book, resting it on the table. His mind is completely absorbed, perhaps in some memory, a memory he’s keeping to himself, a memory that brings more tears.

Those tears are like a knife in you, a deep sadness, and you wish you were alone with him, holding him, though you think he’d rather not be touched… at least not right now.

You’ve told yourself it’s pointless to be in love with him because his “cup is empty.” You’ve told yourself that the day-to-day interactions will make him more human, flawed, less like a fantasy, and when you see his human flaws you’ll fall out of love, but it hasn’t happened. Instead something much worse has happened.

You’ve fallen even more deeply in love with him. With his Blue Eyes. His tears.

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Soul Washing at Wash Park

We walked back to Wash Perk café and stood on the corner, talking, before heading to my car to get his backpack. “There’s nothing I want more than just to be held,” he said, “I long to cuddle and snuggle and feel the comfort of being held.” He stood about a foot away from me, arms folded casually over his chest, eyes gazing ahead at nothing in particular.

Now you might think he sounds a bit effeminate, but I assure you this six-foot-four, athletic man is nothing of the sort. He is very masculine, but not afraid to admit that he longs for that kind of physical comfort as much as any child or woman does. I felt that he was speaking the exact words I needed to hear. He said, “I understand what you want. I want the same thing, but I know it won’t serve you. It will let you escape your pain and that won’t serve you. The best thing you can do is stay with the pain. Let it do the work it’s meant to do.”

I nodded. “I get what you’re saying.” As much as I had wanted him to invite me home just to spend a few hours holding each other and talking, or snuggle up to me on a park bench and put his arm around me, I knew that he was right. I needed to face my pain and not run from it.

We returned to my car to get his backpack. He set it on the ground and gave me a hug. It felt good to be held just for a moment, not enough to allow me to escape my pain, but enough to know I wasn’t alone. As I drove away from the café, I noticed that my brain had stopped having thoughts, like the way Eckhart Tolle talks about having no thoughts in The Power of Now. I didn’t feel like a zombie or anything. I just felt a deep, quiet peace come over me.

I spent the rest of the day in that quiet, peaceful state, walking the 5k loop at City Park, sitting in the shade under a tree, writing a couple of paragraphs in my journal. It took effort to get those words down. My brain was so empty of all thoughts. I sat in a meditative state for quite a long time, watching the geese, watching the people. There were no thoughts of the past, present, or future. I was just fully present.

I think what happened was that my brain stopped searching for escape routes. There were none left. I couldn’t run away from him. I cared about him, and desired his friendship, too much to run. I couldn’t blame him for my pain. I couldn’t escape into the narcotic of physical comfort or sex. There was nothing left to do but accept reality and be present. _________________________________________________________________

LUCIDITY

Tromping through the newly-fallen snow this morning on the way to one of the local cafes, you notice it’s that fluffy cloud-like variety, the kind you always see in paintings of Christmas scenes. Flakes are still floating down, much lighter today than yesterday. This won’t add much to the depth, which by your estimate is only half the weather predicted, about six inches. The bare trees are now covered in a layer of cottony snow. Before leaving the flat, you put on all your warmest clothes, including a cashmere sweater and llama wool hat and are over-heating by the time you arrive.

This cafe reminds you of the one you were at with Blue Eyes when he said,“I long to cuddle and snuggle and feel the comfort of being held.”

Now you go to sleep every night holding him and wake up every morning snuggled up next to him. And you ask yourself almost every day why Spirit brought you two together in this way.

Something to learn.

Last night, during the storm, you stumbled upon a book in his flat, Beyond Fear by don Miguel Ruiz. In it, Ruiz talks about a vision he had in which he was walking down a long hallway and came upon a man who asked him why he was there. “To learn something.”

The man took him to a wall with some images on it and told him to learn the meaning of the images. It took him a year in the vision.

The similarity is striking. You see yourself, walking down a long hallway in the building where you live now. You open the door and enter the flat.

Blue Eyes is there and he asks you, “What is your purpose for being here?”

You respond, “To learn something.”

So, what are you supposed to learn? Perhaps something about the fluidity of life, that life is really just a dream, like any other dream. We think we have no control over it, but if we wake up in the dream, it becomes lucid, and then we can change it in any way we like. How would you like to change this dream?

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Soul Dancing

From a Spiritual Perspective, there is no such thing as a “dysfunctional” relationship. There are only souls in Sacred Contracts with each other, dancing the tango of wounding and healing. After all, that’s what souls come to planet Earth to do.

It’s difficult being human because when we come here, we’re forced to forget all that came before our physical incarnation. For some reason, the way we are made, our fearful egos get into the driver’s seat of our lives and sometimes run amok, mowing people down and smashing headlong into large oak trees.

But if we’re lucky, we get a glimpse of a higher level of consciousness. When that happens we remember that we aren’t actually separate beings, we’re all just little reflective shards of God. And we remember that everything outside of us is only a reflection of what is inside of us.

That’s why when things make no sense to me, I remember it’s only because my brain isn’t as big as the “Supreme Brain,” and that if I trust and have faith, all will be revealed in time.

So in the meantime time, I take all the Earthly fodder and turn it into stories. My Blue-Eyed Muse sings to me and our souls dance.

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Nicking for Starbucks

If you were going to be a thief what would you steal? Well, I can tell you, if I were going to take the risk, it would have to be something good. I kind of like the idea of dressing up in a cat woman costume, breaking into a jewelry store and stealing diamonds and other precious gems. That sounds exciting and glamorous.

But some people just have no imagination (in my opinion). After a neighborhood thief, who has now been identified by the police as “Dusty,” broke into my friend David’s car three times and stole money, credit cards, and a mobile phone (Three times? Yeah, David is one of those space-cadet geniuses like Einstein who forgets to zip up his jeans), it turned out the guy spent most of his stolen loot on Starbucks!

$200 dollars in fact. He used the credit cards to buy $200 worth of Starbucks gift cards! The rest he spent at 7-11. I figured he was probably buying alcohol and cigarettes, but now I think maybe he’s a coffee addict with tastes that run similar to my own. I’m glad they caught the guy, otherwise David might have thought it was me. After all, he knows I’m a total coffee addict.

But seriously, I wouldn’t go out on a cold night dressed in a cat suit for anything less than Cartier… or to scare the pants off Blue Eyes… he he ….